There's also a short version somewhere on the Toki Pona site (where things disappear very thoroughly) and probably some others. It's a good one. 'tempo la' "at some time", usually does for "Once upon a time." I'm not sure what 'ijo' does here "At something's time"?'lawa la' "chiefly, mainly" etc. Nice, if it issn't taken up by. "according to the law, legally", which it might be.Pronouns getting a little unclear by the second paragraph. A noun now and a gain helps.'wawa' has come to mean "fast", so 'o tawa wawa ala' for "Don't run." I don't know what "slow" is.We're still playing with quotes, so I don't know ow much dropping of 'e ni:' or 'e nimi" you can do. Try what seems good to you and see if it causes problems. 'monsuta' alone means "be afraid", so don't need 'pilin''tempo suno pini'Apparently can't drop subjects, even in 'ni:' clauses, so 'mi wile end: mi moku ...' But you could just sa 'mi wile moku e ...', too.'pi' meds two words after it (still; there seems to be a rumbling for changing that),so just ''kalama musi waso'.'pona pi mute mute' (again, a point seemingly in some dispute)'tawa poka nasin' "go to the side of the road" prob 'weka tan nasin' is clearer "get off the beaten track" Ah, yes. kepeken tempo lili' is another expression for "fast" and '...mute' for "slow".'weka lon insa'? "wander around"? Not sure how clear that is.'tawa sina'?

instead of lawa la (which could mean ‘according to the law’) , I thought of “nanpa lawa la” (the number one thing, more importantly, mainly) What do you think ? Maybe “ijo nanpa wan la” or “ijo lawa la” instead ?

I'm sure there are still a lot of errors, I hope I haven't made too much though.I made a few stylistic choices, like “suli suli”.(It's supposed to be a children's story after all, and I find that reduplication has this fun “child” like effect)But if my “stylistic choices” are too far out, please tell me.

'suli suli' is slightly controversial, but "childish" is a good excuse for it. The question for me is always whether it need 'pi' or not, but, in the context of childishness, there is a lot to be said for the "not" side. On the other hand, children to generalize rules pretty well, so maybe not. 'selo' for "embrace", I suppose. 'luka' is standard but gets a little messy. here (although we already have repeated 'kute'presumably ona went to sleep, not sina.'kama lon poka tomo', ditto 'insa' 'kama lukin e soweli lon insa supa lape.' I think the easiest solution is to move 'lape' to right after 'soweli' and you probably don't need 'insa' since 'lon' means "on" (I'm going to skip over the issue of whether the finding was on the bed or the wolf was on the bed when found; I just don't know how that plays out in tp. Your tex has the wold o the bed when found, but needs 'pi' before 'lon'. As I say, the easiest solution ...)just 'tempo suli'. "for a long time": The lon get dropped for 'la' phrases and 'suli' is for duration, 'mute' for repetitions "tempo mute'. "many time, often" -- which might fit here, too.). Similarly for 'lon tempo ni'Not sure 'tawa' is the right preposition for who get the ax but it seems to work OK and I don't know of another off hand. don't need 'e' with 'kepeken' even after 'ala'.Note that 'mute mute' is not the same structure of 'suli suli', but just the ordinary adjective + adverb "very many". It is probably the source of the others, though, since they have the same sort of meaning.'(lon) tenpo ali''toki pi soweli sin' strictly works at some level, but 'toki e ijo pi soweli sin' is clear and generally safer.nice use of 'pake'. 'kama lon insa'Need something to throw this into the subjunctive, as it were. Otherwise it reads "At night, when the girl came from the house, he ate her", which makes here later running errands a bit puzzling until we garden path back. Put this after "ona li pilin e ni: or some such devise (or 'ona li wile e ni:').'meli lili o, o pana'. or just 'meli lili o pana' (no comma)'kepeken poki lili tawa lupa kiwen suli.” 'pi' before 'tawa' and probably 'lon' instead of 'tawa'

Thanks, Gebru"der Grimm, I don't remember that ending, but it's a beauty! And nicely translated, too. Just a little tidying needed. Thanks.

Yeah, well, Lope is a very conservative poner and a strict one (everything not to his standard -- and he has a parsers to enforce it-- is "slang"). He is right that both Pije and pu use the rule he cites. They, of course, violate it within a page of citing it (and Lope does , too, iirc) and they then. try , with increasing implausibility, to cover the gap (after all, in tp, any pair of words can be taken as a noun and an adjective, it's just that most don't make much sense that way). A strict adherence to the rules does have the advantage of doing away with long 'pi' strings, which are admittedly ugly. But often handy to avoid a bunch of sentences to say a relatively simple thing. Community standards have gone beyond this narrow rule to a simpler, more precise, one. Btw, if you agree with this latest claim, you are a "sock puppet" according to Lope. (He is strict on other things, too, but seems especially down on 'pi'.)

Oh, don't give into Lope if it screws things up.'open' is a nouns, so you need 'pi ma' to attach the genitive noun, which has a adjective (modifier, anyhow) in 'pi kasi suli', similarly for 'insa'and, of course, 'tomo pi mama mama meli' is just the case for which 'pi' was invented and fits even Lope's rules. 'supa luna' is iffy but probably ok.again, 'sinpin' is a noun and so need the genitive construction (unless Lope has been so unconservative as to make 'lon sinpin', etc. into complex prepositions. That is a possible move (just short of dropping the 'lon) but. everybody else has resisted it so far (and I suspect Lope really has, too). I doubt 'lon nasin' has been upgraded in any case, so everyone would want a 'pi' there.and 'tomo' again.

The best way to get rid of p\'pi' chains, if you really don't like them, or if they get too confusing (as they easily can) is to rewrite things back to the simple sentences the chains come from and then find better ways to combine them -- or leave them simple, if wordy.

Better to learn it right (pace Lope) than be like too many people who keep trying to use the pu rules even when they clearly don't work, and fairly regularly screw up, sometimes humorously, sometimes disastrously. 'pi' corrections are the most common ones I do, I think, and almost none of them represent more than mislearning the wrong lesson.